Category Archive: the job

Pre-determined stances

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Sat. January 28, 2012

Ehhhh, well this week has had its share of rough patches. I’ve been having a tough time with work lately. I’m on a project with an imminent deadline that seemed impossible to meet. I stayed late on Thursday to try to catch up only to get blocked for unknown reasons. Apparently, I had been given an example to work from that was faulty in the first place. Wonderful! On Friday I was rather frustrated at myself during CrossFit. I was having a fair bit of trouble keeping good form on a certain move and as a result coach prevented me from going further that day. I knew I could do better. I was just not performing. So yeah, perhaps my last Facebook posts have been a bit gloomy.

I suppose I could focus on all of the negatives but there have been plenty of good things as well. I’ve managed to be rather social this week. Right after Friday’s workout I went home, changed, then headed downtown to hang out with friends for someone’s birthday. Today I started another improv class which acts as an assessment of sorts to see where we might fit in in terms of future performance opportunities. I have good vibes about this class. Right after I went home then drove up to Markham for a get together with some running friends. I swear, I’m everywhere.

Anyway, I guess the purpose of me writing all of this is just to have a self-reminder that the quality of our weeks depends on what pre-determined stance we take when we view things. Know what I mean? I suppose this means that I need to encourage positivity. I suppose that’s a possibility, no?

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Jason’s 2011

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Sat. December 31, 2011

I really should have started writing this post a few days ago, but I didn’t feel like forcing myself to do it. The words weren’t flowing. Well, here I am on the final day of the year and I really need to get these words out. This year, 2011, was a bit of a harder one than the last. I remember declaring somewhere that it would be a year of buckling down and riding out tougher times. I was right. That’s not to say that this was a bad year for me. I’m just likely to label it as a challenging one. Did I rise to the challenges thrown at me? I think I did.

Anyway, enough blabber. In depth text follows…after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

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Broken warrior

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Thu. November 3, 2011

Nope. Disillusioned and weary.

Thought I could fight. I was wrong.

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Scrum warrior

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Thu. November 3, 2011

Oooooooh, I’m angry. I’m getting worked up. For one of our projects at work we’re adopting an agile methodology. It’s a style of development that differs from traditional ways of doing things. When done right it works well. I mean, there’s a specific structure involved in doing things, and there really needs to be a big buy in from all those involved. It requires a fair bit of discipline. I’ve worked with this methodology before in my old company. I’ve seen what in can be like, and how it really needs to have that structure. Yes, it’s meant to be agile and adaptable, and it is. Thing is, it can only be that way as long as certain rules and expectations are respected. There’s a huge amount of trust that’s needed. If you don’t end up trusting a member of your team, things will unravel really fast.

So, back to this project. We’re going through our first iteration and I’m starting to see things that are going contrary to principles. There’s been some flagrant rule bending, and it’s making me nutty. If we’re going to make the shift to agile, we need to go all in. There’s no doing it halfway. Leaving work today I was really steamed. Since then I’ve been mulling it over and forming my arguments. By tomorrow I’m going to do a lot of poking around and I really want to go in guns blazing.

I don’t want the trust within the team broken.
I want a strong team where we can depend on each other to get the job done right.
I don’t want the product owners to set unrealistic expectations.
I want to set boundaries that promote reliability.
I don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver.
I want things to be predictable like clockwork.

All of this is reasonable, isn’t it? That’s why I’m going to fight. I shall be the scrum warrior. This is a battle worth fighting.

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Sprouting

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Mon. September 26, 2011

A bit over a month ago I spoke about planting seeds of sorts to help take my career on a different path. So today, I had a follow up meeting with my manager. He was still positive to the idea of me transitioning into something different, which is a bit of a relief. He bounced a few ideas at me and I told him what I thought of them. At this time, we seem to have worked out a roadmap. There will be a few chances to try new roles out to see if I like things, and if I fail I can save face without issue. It’s great. I’m excited. The seeds that were planted are sort of sprouting now. It still remains to be seen if this will lead anywhere, but I’m optimistic.

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Bit more fire

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Fri. September 16, 2011

As usual it seems like I’m portraying a little bit of an acerbic personality to my colleagues. See, it’s not like I’m completely negative; I have a lot of enthusiasm and intensity which is a good quality when channelled. I know some other people that remind me of the dementors of the Harry Potter world: when they enter a room they just suck up all sense of happiness that might exist. No. I think I’ve just got a bit more fire than the rest. I don’t consider that to be a bad thing at all. If I occasionally come across as harsh, I know I have so many other qualities that balance that out that I’m not terribly concerned about people perceiving me as an ogre. Clearly, clearly not true. People just need to figure out how to deal with me. Easy.

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Train wreck territory

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Wed. August 31, 2011

I spent some time thinking about it in the car this morning. If I count the time I spent working through the co-op system, I can say that I’ve been working in the tech industry for about eight years. Kind of crazy. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with companies that have a great workflow. I have a sense of how a great software development workflow should probably go. So, as I’m going along if I see something that’s so obviously off-the-rails shouldn’t I speak up? I mean, I’m not saying that I’m perfect in my procedures, but when things are getting into train wreck territory something has to be done.

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Planting seeds

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Thu. August 18, 2011

Today I had an opportunity to have some one-on-one time with my manager. It was an opportunity to see how I’ve been doing over the past few months. Knowing that this meeting has been coming up, I’ve been scanning my brain to figure out I wanted to talk about. I mean, there are a lot of little things I can mention in terms of coding worries but none of it seemed urgent or pressing. Eventually we got to talking about my long term goals and I said that I wasn’t really sure what I wanted. Somewhere in conversation he mentioned something in terms of moving around the company or gaining new skills. I think that triggered something in my head. I basically told him at that point that I was hoping that I’d get out of a coding role in the future. Just thinking about it, saying such a thing to my manager felt huuuuuge. It’s kind of basically saying that I don’t think I’m on the correct path.

I code. I am decent at it. It’s not where I really want to be. On this path, I could probably continue on to take a senior role or a team lead position. That’s all well and good, but I do not think that kind of thing suits me. Why? Tech and researching new stuff doesn’t really set me on fire. That’s the honest truth. What do I want to do? I’m not sure. I stated that I figure I might be suited to something dealing with communications and other people in general. I think I’m more suited to using my soft skills. I remember posting years ago shortly before graduation about jobs that I think I would be good at. The theme running through what I listed was definitely communication. I want to give it a shot.

How did my manager react? He took it well. I mean it’s not like I’m leaving the team or anything at this very moment. He has a bit of a similar history moving around within one company. And considering that I’m with a huge corporation there’s no better place to do it. I’m just glad that I was given a chance to plant this seed. At this moment, I don’t think he’s entirely sure where I would fit in, but at the very least if I’m set on a different trajectory path I know that I will be better off in the long term. Good things are coming. I can feel it.

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